Sergeant Leonard surveyed the valley with his
high resolution intelligence-grade binoculars. As he panned
across the valley, he reflected that this instrument of his
trade was so far removed from the primitive lens-based magnifying
glasses he supposed the name to have originated from; he wondered
why nobody had ever come up with a more accurate, and well
flashy, name for these outrageously effective devices.

The binoculars scanned every band of EM radiation simultaneously,
displaying an overlaid image of key data on top of the data
in the visual band. Leonard was unsure of the precise resolution
of the optical equipment contained within, but the magnification
was such that you could count how many hairs a target had
missed in his morning shave, or more pertinently you could
read tactical data of even a handheld device at few kilometres
distance, if you knew where to look. This, ironically, was
what Leonard was doing now. Whilst keeping a view of the viewed
parties at larger magnification, he mentally instructed the
device to display an adjusted view of what the datapad displayed.

As he suspected the information was last night’s findings
of the patrols sent out to determine whether a land-based
incursion had been made during the hit and fade run against
the orbitals last night. Leonard shuddered as he remembered
the details of his insertion behind enemy defences. Along
with the team’s strategist, the mission planners had
decided that the best way to place an elite military unit
onto the planets surface was via personnel drop-ship rather
than civilian infiltration. These drop-ships looked, to all
intents and purposes as though they were fragments of a larger
vessel, burning through the atmosphere after a battle. Under
the rocky exterior however, was some serious ablative shielding
that kept the team, and just as importantly the anti-gravity
generators from harm. The ride down was incredible, and even
the members with constitutions of iron had to choke back vomit
as they experienced the unpredictable turbulence of an “uncontrolled”
free fall from space to ground. Leonard had refused the drugs
given to other team members to hold them in check, and had
felt the wrath of his insides upon landing. He reflected that
he had probably been more incapacitated by motion sickness
than any drug side-effects would have made him, at the start
of the mission. He shuddered again.

After being spewed from the remains of a droid frigate in
the dummy hit and fade, the drop ship had fallen to ground
precisely on target, and the team had quickly scrambled through
the forest away from the site of the landing, trusting the
mechanisms that prevented the detection of the dropship to
do their dirty work. The contents of the data pad revealed
that this, was indeed the case since the patrol had concluded
that it was indeed a fragment of the droid ship and now their
stealthy insertion was complete. He wasn’t surprised
at the caution displayed by the Federation scum, since the
“debris” had fallen miraculously close to the
critical space port controlling traffic to and from the Orbital
shipyards and terminals.

His team was on the ridge of a grand valley with evergreen
forest rolling down the gentle hills toward the grey mass
that was the spaceport. Leonard was always struck by the beauty
of existence, from radiation bursts in quasars to biological
life like these trees. His binoculars showed the position
of every human guard, patrol and (through clever circuitry)
droid sentry in the valley. The main road into the base had
a constant stream of traffic, as was usual on such an industrial
world, and the whole setting was bathed in the light of the
waning sun, as it settled down to the horizon. Not that this
mattered, since every vehicle on the road was profile by his
bodysuit’s device and compared with tactical threat
analysis stored in his computer. No military materiél
was being moved into the naval base on the outskirts of the
starport before the facility gate closed for the night. Leonard
judged that tonight was the ideal time to move on the facility.

He looked about him, assessing his team. They were the best;
there was no doubt about that. The rebel faction could not
have produced finer agents, in his not-so-humble opinion.
Jones, the explosives guru had served during three wars in
both the espionage and sabotage branches of the intelligence’s
elite delta-directorate squad. When Leonard had defected from
the corrupt Federation to the rebel faction, Jones had been
there at his side, as had the other long-standing member of
his squad, Michelle Casucalla. In his opinion Michelle had
an almost telepathic bond to computer’s hardware, and
was spiritually married to their software. Still she had an
easy wit and was back there bantering with the combat specialists
like she was in the officers’ mess on a training world.
No, there was no doubt in his mind, this team was exceptional
– they were literally living weapons. Undetectable weapons.
The entire team was decked out in a bodysuit that rendered
them completely invisible within nanoseconds, in high alert
stealth mode even the in-suit binoculars could detect nothing,
save the signature signal beamed only when the team was close
together. Whilst this technology was far behind the natural
shape-shifting of the Darloks, no other empire, let alone
faction could muster such intelligence technology.

Leonard’s admiration for the people of the Faction
had always been high. Appalled at the corruption and cruelty
of the Federation’s ruling classes, swathes of planets
had cut loose from what they saw as greater tyranny than that
of the New Orions. At least they had the benefit of being
a xenophobic alien race, with a taste for sadism and cruelty.
That the noble and benign rulers of the greatest human empire
in galactic history could have fallen into such depths of
barbarity and depraved oppression was inexcusable. So they
had revolted, but the word conveyed connotations of greater
drama than what had actually taken place. The rulers of the
federation had woken up one morning to find a full half of
their planets under a different flag, a third of their entire
navy “protecting” those planets in the hands of
the rebels and an invitation to attend a session of the Orion
Senate ratifying this new empire. The fighting between the
two had been brutal and ferocious, with the federation committing
horrific atrocities as the rebels struggled to deploy their
over-matched fleet to protect their members. But, somehow
they had held on, won key victories and now the balance was
changing. While the rebellion was planned key university worlds
developed, in concert with the formidable Psilons, secret
and undeclared technology that had now filtered its way to
the fore of the armed forces. Then they had exceeded even
the Psilons and developed these suits. And tonight they were
going to make the ultimate difference.